102 replies to this topic

[thani]

Thank you mmccue for starting this thread. I will try to replicate/recreate your latest findings tomorrow with a red filter that came with my sealux housing.

This WB issue bothers me so much, that I might have to go out and rent the camera just to find out more before actually purchasing it. If it consoles you at all, I might mention that I did work for half a year in UAE in 1979 before entering the broadcast TV and computer graphics business.

I feel the same and aggravated by this issue that I am setting late way pass my sleeping hours trying to engage and analyze the issue. You are always welcome back in the UAE, it is much better now

I believe Simon's reasoning makes lots of sence:

I also remember when the Z1 was having some of these issues (very green water when using one touch WB)

Look at these images as they go from blue to green as WB goes higher. The camera does not add any red hue and thus the colors such as the sand does not get whiter and the purple sponges does not get the right saturation level and the rock does not look brownish as seen in my EX1 clip above. The correct red filter might make the difference as Simon says, I hope.

Happy holidays guys

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Edited by thani, 25 December 2012 - 12:37 PM.

[Drew]

Have you guys tried shifting the WB Level to +Red and using a grey slate with some red on it? Seems what the algorithm is doing is shifting to the green channel because it can't detect enough red to justify a shift to that channel. By forcing it to see some red, you may be able to trick it to stop shifting to the green channel.
This is a trait that's been around for a while. Could be exaggerated with the newer Sony algorithms.

[mmccue]

I think you're on to something Drew. I did a quick online search and found a nice FS100 handbook (http://stake5.be/att...00_handbook.pdf) that I haven't seen before. It has good explanations about all of the functions and picture profile settings. Under white balance it states;

"There are times when the correct white balance cannot be obtained by
designating a color temperature alone, such as when you are shooting
under fluorescent or LED lights. In such cases, we recommend you
also use the WB SHIFT function under the Picture Profile menu"

This is what it says in the picture profile section;

WB SHIFT
Fine-tunes white balance or creates an effect that is similar to using a color filter. Two types of adjustment methods — LB-CC
and R-B — are available. We recommend you start with the LB-CC adjustment method. A higher set value leads to warmer colors,
while a lower setting creates colder colors. Please make sure you adjust white balance first.

FILTER TYPE ➞ LB-CC (Light Balancing - Color Correcting)
:LB (COL TEMP): Adds an effect similar to applying a color temperature adjustment filter
–9 (Blue: Bluish) ~ +9 (Amber: Reddish)
NOTE: Approx. 100K/step
:CC (MG/GR): Adds an effect similar to applying a color correction filter
–9 (CCG: Green) ~ +9(CCM: Magenta)
NOTE: 1 step is equivalent to 2.5 in color correction filter number.

FILTER TYPE ➞ R-B
:Alters the R (Red) or B (Blue) level in the video signal.
–9 (Lowest level) ~ +9 (Highest level)

I'm at work now, so I'll have to wait until later to experiment, but it souds like shifting up to amber in the LB setting, and/or up towards magenta in the CC, and possibly shifting down towards red in the RB should result in the desired effect. Sounds like I may need to spend some time sitting on the bottom paging through menus, but hopefully I can come up with a few picture profiles to choose from as depths and conditons change.

To answer your question Simon, I have tried 2 different filters (I mentioned the brands earlier). I definitely have had more success with the second one over the other. I'll pick up a URPRO and give that a try too.

Thanks for the reccomendations,

Mike

[thani]

Finally Drew to the Rescue. Thanks man
Mike, thank for the handbook. I stumbled on it before, skimmed through it. It is a good example to follow for manufacturer as a user manual with illustrations.

So building on Simon's finding and Drew's solution, we could have two PPs:
1) green water pp,
2) blue water pp.
And we may not need a red filter - I said may be

I can't wait to try it on land, then hopefully Sultan will take us diving and experimenting soon.
Here is a pp screen capture:

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[Drew]

Well I'm not sure it's the solution, but it's worth testing. What you want to change is WB Shift. With other 3X sensor cameras, it's not a huge shift but it does shove the WB to represent colors a bit better underwater if you get the settings right.
Afterall, depending on turbidity etc, red can fully disappear (absorbed) as shallow as 15m. So I'm assuming the WB algorithm doesn't detect red at all and shifts to the green channel by default to counter the cyan/blue.
That's one of the phenomenas discovered in previous WB threads. A grey glove, palm or white board with red squiggled on it gives a better MWB. By shifting WB to red, and using a subject that has red and closer to the lens (remember distance to subject is part of the depth calculation). Worth while trying that as an experiment.
A filter basically is an optical WB by lowering GB, then R is brought out a bit, at the expense of noise. I'd done experiments with this on a few cameras but lost the results in a HDD crash. Never bothered to retry due to time.

[thani]

Hi there,

Sultan finally drilled a whole in his custom housing for the fs700 and fixed a WB control arm successfully - I will update that thread later.
Now let us go back to the WB challenge.
At depth down to 50 feet, the camera can managed a good WB level without a red filter. Beyond that, the deeper you go the greener the images get.
Keep in mind our water has a green tint to it. We are shooting, in Musandm - Oman.
We palyed with the profiles using the parameters mentioned previously in the thread but that did not fix the green problem. I will try to explain that later today, I am running late for work
The first image is taking roughly at 30 foot and the other at 100.

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[jonny shaw]

Although this isn't an FS100 it is shot using a RED, I think this is very appropriate. I just dived on Tuesday with a Magic Filter as I haven't been super happy with the results at depth from the camera even though it shoots in RAW. I have found that the red channel just separates away too much to be able to pull it back to get a decent image. Here is a quick test, shot at 20m depth, 3-5m vis using the Tokina 10-17 @ 17mm and @f4.5. I was using a pair of Solas 4000 with filters too (thanks Pete L) which obviously help but I was reasonably happy with the results



[vimeohd]57037737[/vimeohd]

Edited by jonny shaw, 09 January 2013 - 01:55 PM.

[SimonSpear]

Hiya Jon

Lovely Dragons! A lot of the RED footage I've seen has suffered from a Magenta 'tinge'. That fact that you had not been able to pull the reds back with raw footage could be an explanation for that. Did you have the filter on the camera end of the Tokina?

Cheers, Simon

[SimonSpear]

Ok 1 week till I'm off. So far I have the following filters ready for testing:

URPRO Blue Water - Glass
URPRO Green Water - Glass
URPRO Blue Water - Acrylic
Magic Filter - Original SLR
Magic Filter - Auto

I'm actually reasonably optimistic about the auto Magic Filter as it is a lot closer in colour to a URPRO than the original version which I have used before with mostly unsatisfactory results.

I'm going to be diving in what I think will be blue water but there definitely seems to be a distinct lack of Magenta in the screen shots posted so far from depth in those conditions so I thought it was worth trying the URPRO Green Water filter out as well as it is basically a Magenta filter. (Note to self - I probably should have got a Magic Filter Green water delivered too. I'll see if I can still get one in time).

If anyone has any other suggestions please let me know.

While doing some topside WB testing through a filter I have been getting a few strange results. One test in particular while white balancing off an off-white wall was giving me results ranging from 2900K to 8500K from the same patch of wall. Hmmmmm.

Cheers, Simon

Edited by SimonSpear, 13 January 2013 - 05:02 AM.

[thani]

Thanks John for sharing your video & thoughts. We can not find such beautiful creatures here
I guess I am lucky with my EX1 as it does a perfect job without a filter even at depths below 100 feet. It is strange to see higher end cameras struggle underwater to WB. They are made for land use after All.

Simon, try to play with the WB Shift & Color Depth with & without filters.
Sultan tried them briefly:

WB Shift:LB-CC: +9
made the Red color more rich but did not fix green video tent at depth deeper than 50 foot.
then, in ADDITION he tried:

Color Depth: G:-9, R:+9
to see the extreme effect which resulted in more reddish and greens & yellow were affected negatively but badly. The green tint as seen above lightened but not drastically to a point where it is fixed.
G:-4. Maintained better green and yellow on subjects.

We hope to try a red filter this weekend

We are eagerly awaiting the good news Simon.

I think you're on to something Drew. I did a quick online search and found a nice FS100 handbook (http://stake5.be/att...00_handbook.pdf) that I haven't seen before. It has good explanations about all of the functions and picture profile settings. Under white balance it states;

WB SHIFT
Fine-tunes white balance or creates an effect that is similar to using a color filter. Two types of adjustment methods — LB-CC
and R-B — are available. We recommend you start with the LB-CC adjustment method. A higher set value leads to warmer colors,
while a lower setting creates colder colors. Please make sure you adjust white balance first.

FILTER TYPE ➞ LB-CC (Light Balancing - Color Correcting)
:LB (COL TEMP): Adds an effect similar to applying a color temperature adjustment filter
–9 (Blue: Bluish) ~ +9 (Amber: Reddish)
NOTE: Approx. 100K/step
:CC (MG/GR): Adds an effect similar to applying a color correction filter
–9 (CCG: Green) ~ +9(CCM: Magenta)
NOTE: 1 step is equivalent to 2.5 in color correction filter number.

FILTER TYPE ➞ R-B
:Alters the R (Red) or B (Blue) level in the video signal.
–9 (Lowest level) ~ +9 (Highest level)

Mike

[jonny shaw]

Thanks guys,
Simon, yep this was shot with a Magic Filter CM-1 and the lights were Sola 4000's with the cyan filter. The filter is taped to the back of the lens I actually really like the magic filter although it does stop at least a stop if not two of light. I am keen to shoot some WA stuff at shallower depths to compare.
I have always found the URPro Green water filters need seriously green water to work,

[thani]

We hope to try a red filter this weekend

Hi guys,

We did a crude test of UR Pro filters: Green Water (Purplish) & a Blue water (Redish).
We did not have the proper size so here is a clip demonstrating the result:
[youtubehd]fDwzB0FgSh4[/youtubehd]


Regards,
Thani

[SimonSpear]

Hi all

I'll write up a summary of my findings from diving Socorro when I get chance this week, but in essence I didn't have any issue with green colour cast as long as I used MWB and not the preset K temp settings. I did have a LOT of issues to overcome and I'll go into more detail on these too. Will post as soon as I can.

Cheers, Simon

[SimonSpear]

A few qualifiers:

I was diving at the Socorro Islands and I encountered typical East Pacific waters. 15m vis, fairly blue, but not necesarily conductive to reproducing good colours for photos/video like you would see in the Red Sea, the Carribbean or the Indo/Pacific.

I was using a useless lens (Sony 16mm Pancake) which I'm just going to throw away and not even bother to sell. It was horrible. Results will definitely change using a different lens (hopefully for the better!!).

Ok in summary:

The colour reproduction from the FS100 is poor underwater when compared to what is achievable on a HDSLR

Although the FS100 is incredible in low light topside, it really suffers using anything above 9db/1250ISO underwater as it produces an ugly digital grain apppearance. Best results were achieved with 0db/500ISO. This is a major disappointment for me as one of the reasons why I bought a housing for this camera was due to its amazing topside low light performance.

You DON'T get a green colour cast when you use MWB. You DO get a green colour cast when you use the preset K for White Balance.

You really can't push the WB on this camera. When you do, especially if you are at a high db/ISO the image just falls apart (see image 4 & 5).

IMO MWB worked best when used WITHOUT a filter. Ok I know this goes against everything I've said up until now, but I was wrong ok!!

All images are straight from the camera with no colour correction or other edits. I've posted them at 1280x720, but if anyone wants to look at the original 1920x1080 files then PM and I'll send them over.

Am I happy? No I'm not. This camera should perform a whole lot better than this. I think once I've played around with the images I will get something acceptable, but I was hoping for so much more.....

Ok here are the images:

Image 1 - DEPTH 10M, URPRO BLUE WATER FILTER, MWB, 9bd GAIN



Image 2 - DEPTH 15M, URPRO BLUE WATER FILTER, MWB, 9bd GAIN



Image 3 - DEPTH 30M, URPRO BLUE WATER FILTER, MWB, 9bd GAIN



Image 4 - DEPTH 30M, URPRO BLUE WATER FILTER, MWB, 15bd GAIN



Image 5 - DEPTH 30M, URPRO BLUE WATER FILTER, MWB, 18bd GAIN



Image 6 & 7 Comparison. SAME SHOT BUT IMAGE 6 = 15000K PRESET, IMAGE 7 = MWB.

Edited by SimonSpear, 04 February 2013 - 12:48 PM.

[SimonSpear]

Image 8 - DEPTH 15M, URPRO GREEN WATER FILTER, MWB, 9bd GAIN



Image 9 - DEPTH 20M, URPRO GREEN WATER FILTER, MWB, 15bd GAIN



Image 10 - DEPTH 30M, URPRO GREEN WATER FILTER, MWB, 9bd GAIN



Image 11 - DEPTH 30M, URPRO GREEN WATER FILTER, MWB, 0bd GAIN



Image 12 - DEPTH 5M, NO FILTER, Preset 8000K, 9bd GAIN



Image 13 - DEPTH 15M, NO FILTER, MWB, 0bd GAIN



Image 14 - DEPTH 20M, NO FILTER, MWB, 0bd GAIN

[jonny shaw]

Interesting stuff Simon, in your opinion with obviously no scientific testing but just your experience what are your thoughts on the FS100 underwater compared to your old V1 and your 7D.
I agree that the no filter shots look better,

[RWBrooks]

Indeed interesting stuff, were most of the images taken in overcast conditions except #1 & 2?

[Rook]

Simon, I've been following this string with interest, I also just got the FS100 and am having WB issues as well.
I was just at the Galapagos and didn't have much luck with MWB, it seemed to add to much red. The water wasn't the nice blue that you get at Socorro but more green to brownish at the thermocline.
I see all of your test pics. and am wondering what you were using for your WB card? White? Gray? The Sun? The Amphibico slate if so which side? Sand?
It made a big difference with my old Z1.

Thanks,

Monte

[SimonSpear]

Interesting stuff Simon, in your opinion with obviously no scientific testing but just your experience what are your thoughts on the FS100 underwater compared to your old V1 and your 7D.
I agree that the no filter shots look better,

Like you said just IMO and non scientific but...

The FS100 is better than either the V1 or the 7D when it comes to resolution. Neither of them are even in the same ballpark when it comes to that (and that was even using a crappy lens!).

The 7D is definitely better at colour reproduction/MWB.

The V1 was similar to the FS100 at colour reproduction but for different reasons. The FS100 will MWB at any depth where the V1 just wouldn't lock on below a certain depth. The FS100 has a cut off point around 15-20m after which pushing the WB with MWB produces unacceptable results, which is a very similar depth to that when the V1 wouldn't MWB anymore.

After some brief tests I do think the HDV footage from the V1 will be easier to manipulate in post than the AVCHD from the FS100. That shocked me to be honest and I definitely wasn't expecting that as topside the footage from the FS100 is a dream to work with.

[SimonSpear]

Indeed interesting stuff, were most of the images taken in overcast conditions except #1 & 2?

Hi Richard

Yes it was overcast and windy most of the time actually, although you don't get anywhere near the light penetration that you do say in Palau. I found that getting the right exposure was a constant challenge.

For a Socorro trip it was apparently pretty bad weather and we didn't make it to one of the islands as the crossing was too rough so they had to turn around.